Embedded Software Engineer

Embedded Software Engineer

Department: Research & Development

Employment Type: Full Time

Location: US-California-San Jose

Compensation: $131,200 - $180,400 / year

About this opportunity

As an Embedded Software Engineer, you will play a key role in defining and developing next-generation products and technologies. You will lead firmware architecture and development efforts from early concept exploration through prototype validation and high-volume manufacturing. This position offers the opportunity to solve complex technical challenges, influence product direction, and work across disciplines to bring innovative products to market. You will join a highly collaborative team of hardware, firmware, systems, and product engineers dedicated to engineering excellence, innovation, and delivering exceptional user experiences.

The ideal candidate combines deep embedded systems expertise with strong technical leadership, a system-thinking mindset, and a passion for building reliable, scalable, and high-performance products.

In this role, you will…

• Lead the architecture, design, development, and debugging of embedded firmware for new products and major product enhancements.
• Drive firmware technical direction and make critical design decisions involving performance, power consumption, reliability, security, and manufacturability.
• Develop and optimize device drivers, middleware, and platform software for microcontrollers, processors, peripherals, and sensors.
• Design and implement real-time, low-power, and wireless solutions for resource-constrained embedded systems.
• Lead hardware-software integration, system bring-up, debugging, and performance optimization throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Define firmware verification and validation strategies, including test plans, automation frameworks, and reliability testing.
• Collaborate closely with hardware, systems, product management, manufacturing, and quality teams to drive cross-functional solutions and resolve complex technical challenges.
• Mentor junior engineers through code reviews, design reviews, debugging, and technical guidance.
• Support manufacturing ramp activities, investigate field issues, and drive root-cause analysis and corrective actions.
• Continuously evaluate emerging technologies, architectures, tools, and development methodologies to improve product capabilities and development efficiency.
• Author and maintain design specifications, architecture documents, technical reports, and development best practices.

In this role, you’ll need …

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of embedded software development experience with consumer electronics, wearable devices, medical devices, IoT products, or other high-volume embedded systems.
• Demonstrated ownership of firmware development throughout the full product lifecycle, from architecture and prototyping through production deployment and sustaining engineering.
• Expert-level proficiency in C/C++ for embedded applications.
• Strong understanding of microcontroller and microprocessor architectures, embedded operating systems, memory management, interrupt handling, and real-time systems.
• Extensive experience developing device drivers and interfacing with sensors, peripherals, and communication interfaces such as SPI, I2C, UART, USB, and CAN.
• Experience with wireless technologies including Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Bluetooth Classic, Wi-Fi, and related protocols.
• Strong understanding of power optimization techniques, system performance analysis, and resource-constrained embedded design.
• Experience with embedded security principles, secure boot, authentication, encryption, and cybersecurity best practices.
• Proven ability to diagnose and resolve complex hardware-software integration issues using lab equipment and debugging tools.
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and technical leadership skills, with the ability to influence decisions across engineering disciplines.
• Experience in medical device industry is a plus.

Align Technology designs and manufactures the…